HuffPost blogger, college prof: Release birth certificate

'It's so easy. I think most of us have ours in our important papers at home'

Carol Swain, a professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University who blogs for the left-leaning Huffington Post, says President Obama should just release his original long-form birth certificate and have done with the dispute.

“I believe that the president should end the speculation by being transparent about all aspects of his background,” Swain said. “In fact, it can be argued that the president belongs to the people and to scholars, biographers and others who are entitled to know every aspect of his past. Only great men can ascend to this height, and their lives should be examined and studied for the lessons they offer.”

She told WND she really doesn’t see the point in pursuing all sorts of after-the-election challenges to Obama.

“He was elected. This was not brought up or pursued by any of his opponents. The opportunity to pursue it is done,” she said.

But she said the president is inexplicably fueling the controversy.

“I do find it problematic that the White House doesn’t just release the document and end the discussion,” she told WND. “It’s so easy to do. I think most of us do have our birth certificates in our important papers at home.”

The very fact that Obama has fought tooth and nail to prevent any release of his original long-form birth certificate – as well as other documentation – “suggests there’s something that the president has decided not to share with the public.”

“Here’s the issue for me,” Swain told WND. “I think that by not releasing it, it makes [some] people much more passionately opposed to the president. That causes ordinary people to have dinnertime conversations about the topic.”

The president should, she said, “just put it to bed once and for all.”

The danger actually is heightened by Obama’s refusal to provide any information.

“They don’t accept him as president because they don’t think he’s legitimate,” she said.

Obama doesn’t seem to understand, she said, “If you can make something go ahead, you should.”

She said there are those among her fellow professors who also have concerns, but are afraid to touch the issue.

And the fact Obama isn’t willing to provide information – spending sums estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars on attorneys to fight any release of personal information – makes it worse, she said.

“This was such a historic election, it’s all the more important that [people] would want to know as much as possible about how this person became the first African-American president.”

Refusing to respond, is “arrogance on the part of the White House,” she said.

Multiple legal battles have been raging over access to the president’s original long-form birth certificate, which presumably would answer questions about his birth time and place, parents and other issues. But even releasing that would not resolve the problem, some have argued, because of various laws in effect at the time he was born.

Among those are the possible options allowed in Hawaii through which an out-of-state birth could have qualified for Hawaiian birth certificate. And besides the birth document, WND has reported that other document still not released by Obama includes kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.